The tsinidrinzi (/sɪnɪˈdrɪnzi/) is a warm-colored stranger with a rounded body, slender tail, and a crowd of long, tapered limbs emerging from its underside. Its thin mouth is filled with jagged, sharp teeth, and its tongue is long and tumbles forward as it moves. Its skin is smooth and vinyl-like, and it bulges like an inflatable toy, its motions airy and weightless. Despite its rotund midsection, the tsinidrinzi is relatively lightweight, its body filled with a spongy, helium-filled tissue, giving the tsinidrinzi an unsteady, easily-toppled posture. Likewise, although its dark inner flesh is rubbery in texture, this core is quite soft, and, once punctured, deflates rapidly and fatally. Its highly durable and stretchy skin, however, prevents incidental injury. Aside from this durability, the tsinidrinzi has no other defenses, and possesses almost no regenerative ability.

The tsinidrinzi talks in a fleeting, murmuring stream. Although its voice is recognizably human, it is highly distorted, like a crowd of people whispering each on top of the other, the individual words impossible to discern. The voices within these streams vary greatly. Some tsinidrinzi sound like a group of adult women, while others sound like a multitude of children, and still others sound like weary old men. Most commonly, these streams express a range of individual voices, with more uniform streams being the outliers.

environment and generation

The tsinidrinzi appears in any long, outdoor corridor. Alleyways, covered bridges, and isolated side streets are common locations for a tsinidrinzi to generate, as are waterless canals and underpasses. It most frequently appears during overcast weather and on foggy mornings. When it first appears, the tsinidrinzi starts off as a small, bulging mass of rubbery flesh, which unfolds itself in a series of turning motions, arms reaching forward to pull the tsinidrinzi's body to full size.

behaviour

The tsinidrinzi possesses an erratic, droll nature. A single tsinidrinzi moves through its environment at random, climbing over dumpsters, rolling on the ground, and pulling trash towards itself with no greater purpose. Its movements vary considerably, ranging from slow, fluid walking to dance-like swaying, with speech unobserved in lone individuals. A single individual does not display either investigatory nor destructive tendencies towards itself or its environment, and does not react to any stimulus. With little regard for its environment, a lone tsinidrinzi will even move through fire, walk off of high ledges, or tumble into piercing obstacles.

Despite this arbitrary behaviour, the tsinidrinzi displays a fundamental magnetism towards others of its strain, and as tsinidrinzi group together, their behaviour grows more focused, and they travel in more straightforward paths. Speech is also heard at this point, with each tsinidrinzi's whispering, murmuring voice mixing in with the susurrations of its companions.

Tsinidrinzi infestations tend to occur suddenly and within a short span of time. During these infestations, quantities of tsinidrinzi appear in various locations on the outskirts of a city, and, as they group together and become more ordered, move in spiraling paths to converge at a single, prominent landmark – usually, an extrusive fountain, statue, tower, or other visible marker, such as the tallest or largest building within a city.

Just as the tsinidrinzi's behaviour grows more ordered when in groups, so too does it degrade when individuals within the group die, forcing survivors to return to their more chaotic earlier actions. When isolated once more, the tsinidrinzi continues wandering at random, losing all gravitation towards a central landmark.

interactions with sensitives

Although the tsinidrinzi is theoretically harmless, it cannot be approached, for any proximity to it causes light-headedness and momentary confusion, forcing the sensitive to (often involuntarily) turn around and walk back in the direction from which they came. This effect, though unpleasant, does not cause any long-term damage. In the days following such an encounter, however, sensitives do experience a vague unfamiliarity with their surroundings, and must pay close attention to maps or landmarks to navigate even otherwise familiar environments.

aging and death

As it ages, the tsinidrinzi sags as though deflating, and its body droops more and more. It continues to pull itself forward, unaware of this change in states, before it crumples to the ground, its empty skin shrinking down to tightened wrinkles, and then to nothing at all.

When a group of tsinidrinzi are able to reach the endpoint of their convergent journey, however, their bodies fade into a vaporous and ethereal form upon reaching this destination.

"I'd been following their path for several weeks, but I was surprised to see that they'd chosen the Welcoming Statue, that forty-foot, pyramid shaped monstrosity on the lawn in front of city hall, over city hall itself. It was late at night when they climbed upon the statue and piled themselves around like cigarette-trails-turned-cotton-candy, and I couldn't see the eyesore at all. They converged tighter and tighter around it, and then began to disappear right into the side. When the sun came up, their whispers had turned silent, and no trace of them remained. And as the fog lifted, the monument, it was bleached pure white, and no one knew but me." source unknown